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The UK is encouraged by the “strength of support” from allies to take action against Russia after the nerve agent attack on the former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Boris Johnson has said.

The British foreign secretary said the Kremlin must explain by midnight on Tuesday it if was behind the attack, or if it had allowed the deadly nerve agent Novichok to fall into the wrong hands.

“If they can come up with a convincing explanation, then obviously we will want to see full disclosure of that to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in the Hague,” he said.

On Tuesday, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Russia had requested access to the substance to perform its own checks but the request had been refused.

The US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, said the attack “clearly came from Russia” and would have consequences. His remarks went further than those of prime minister, Theresa May, who told the House of Commons on Monday it was “highly likely” Russia was behind the attack.

This is fine, etc.

Maybe for once, someone will call me "Sir" without adding, "You're making a scene."

...Haspel's past in the agency is already drawing opposition to her potential promotion. She reportedly ran a secret prison in Thailand in 2002 where terrorism suspects were waterboarded and subjected to other so-called enhanced interrogations.

Christopher Anders, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington legislative office, called Haspel the “central figure in one of the most illegal and shameful chapters in modern American history.”

“She was up to her eyeballs in torture: both in running a secret torture prison in Thailand, and carrying out an order to cover up torture crimes by destroying videotapes,” Anders said. “One man held at the secret prison she ran was waterboarded 83 times, slammed against walls, sleep deprived, and locked in a coffin-like box. After she was promoted to a position back at CIA headquarters, she worked to destroy evidence of the torture crimes committed at the prison she ran.”